Recently, I was at a St. Vincent de Paul store shopping for used
books, which I do every so often. I found 4 or 5 books of moderate
interest, including Malachi Martin's book on the Jesuits, which I bought
mostly for bibliophile kicks. When I placed my books on the checkout
counter, a man checking out next to me looked over and blurted out, with
apparent surprise, “Why are you buying a book about the Jesuits?”

Always
looking for an opening to engage in serious discussions about matters
Catholic, I said, “I'm thinking about becoming a Jesuit.”

Meanwhile,
my 6-year-old son (named after the founder of the Dominican order),
stood patiently, oblivious to the deep conversation emerging in front of
him. “Really?” asked the man, who appeared to be about fifty years old,
“I used to be a Jesuit. I was with them for many years.” He appeared to
be dead serious, unlike myself. I smiled and replied, “No. But I do
work for a Jesuit.”

That caught his attention. “Who?”

“Fr.
Joseph Fessio,” I said. “I work for Ignatius Press.” His demeanor
changed ever so slightly, from curious to cautious. “Oh,” he said,
“you're on that side.” He then turned to the cashier helping
him and said, jokingly, “You do know that the entire world is run by
Jesuits, right?”

“Actually,” I piped up, again, helpfully, “I have
it on good account that the world is run by Franciscans, who only use
the Jesuits and the U.N. as fronts. But I'm curious: what sides are you
referring to?” Alas, the (allegedly) former Jesuit was heading out the
door.

I'm fairly certain that if he had given me answer about
“sides” it would have been along the lines of “conservatives vs.
liberals” or something similar.

For
most casual observers, whether Catholic or not, the main battle lines
within American Catholicism today seem self-evident. The cleavage
overlaps perfectly the divide between the political parties, leading to
the frequently-used labels “liberal” and “conservative” Catholics. We
have Nancy Pelosi and Andrew Cuomo representing the Left, and Rick
Santorum and Sam Brownback aligned with the Right. Mainstream opinion
has classified Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI as honorary
Republicans, and Pope Francis as a Democrat (hence, why he is appearing
on the covers ofTime andRolling Stone magazines).

This
division does indeed capture real battle lines, but more than anything,
the divide is merely an extension of our politics, andwhile manned by
real actorsdoes not capture where the real action is to be found today
in American Catholic circles.

Deenen goes on to outline a debate
that has been of great interest to me for as long as I've been Catholic,
a largely friendly but serious disagreement between those who generally
have a very positive view of the American experiment and those who
think the foundations of the United States were deeply flawed and
essentially contrary to Catholic belief and social doctrine. The former
group includes writers such as George Weigel, Michael Novak, the late
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, and others associated with First Things,
founded about twenty years ago by Fr. Neuhaus. The latter group
includes philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, theologian David L. Schindler,
historian Glenn Olsen (who is not mentioned by Deenen), and many of
those associated with Communio, which was founded over forty years ago by Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, and others.

Deenan,
who is aligned with the latter group, highlights some recent salvos in
this debate, and provides links to some of the recent missives by
various parties. His piece is a helpful introduction to this discussion
(for those who aren't aware of it) and gives a good sense of why it is
so important. In short, the debate is only partially about the past; its
real focus is on what can be done by Catholics in the here-and-now of
modern America to plant roots, expound basic principles, uphold social
doctrine, and build a culture built on truth, goodness, and beauty.

Personally, I admire and have benefited immensely from the writings of all those listed above, and have been reading both First Things and Communio
since the 1990s. I have many friends on both sides of the debate, and I
have moved this way and thatin small, never seismic, shiftsover time.
However, I have come in recent years to lean toward the latter, more
“radical” groupwith an emphasis on “lean.” I was fortunate to have an
exceptional class on Catholic Social Thought in the University of Dallas
MTS program (I graduated in 2000), taught by Dr. Mark Lowery, the notes
for which can be found on Dr. Lowery's personal site. Dr. Lowery's faculty page contains the following statement about his approach to

My
approach tries to avoid two erroneous ways of considering the Christian
tradition in relation to secularity. First, it is wrongheaded to
"deconstruct" the traditional doctrines of Christianity in order to make
them compatible with the canons of secular orthodoxy. Such
deconstruction infuses Christian doctrines with radically new meanings
that are fundamentally incompatible with the originals. In such a
method, the doctrines no longer are genuine truth claims, but rather
become mere approximations relative to a variety of other
approximations. The alleged goal of such relativizing - under the guise
of "neutrality - is greater tolerance and openness, but the end result
is all too often a tyrannical imposition of a pure relativism that isn't
really neutral at all.

Second,
it is equally wrongheaded, though quite understandable, to take a
fundamentally defensive stance against secularity. Unconcerned about
meeting its questions and objetions, one disappears into a kind of
fundamentalist and paleomorphic ghetto in a vain attempt to retain the
purity of one's beliefs. Often such a reaction takes a fideistic tone,
unconcerned about the inner intelligibility of the truths being
protected. Tragically, the heteronomous element of such an approach is
precisely what caused many moderns to recoil from Christianity in the
first place.

Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor,
notes that authentic Catholic theology rejects both the autonomous
position of modernity (embraced by some Catholics themselves) and the
heteronomous position of many reactionary religious groups (including
some withing Catholicism itself). Authentic freedom is neither
autonomous ("I can do what I want as long as I don't hurt anyone else")
nor Heteronomous ("I'll submit to these extrinsically imposed truths")
but rather is described as a "participatory theonomy" by which the truth
is built for man's nature and man's nature partakes in that truth. Put
simply, the truth is friendly to our being.

Frankly, many of the
debates within Catholic circles either bore me, puzzle me, or depress
me. But the debate mentioned above is, I think, both fascinating and
important, touching as it does on all sorts of interrelated matters:
theology, philosophy, history, social doctrine, politics, and much more.
In the words of Deenen:

If one paid
attention only to canned accounts of things Catholic in the mainstream
media, you would think that there’s something called “conservative”
Catholicism that spends all of its time fretting about liberal
“Catholicism.” That debate, such as it is, is merely our well-rutted
political division with a Latin accent; the real intellectual action
that will likely influence the future of Catholicism in America is being
fought in trenches largely out of sight of much of the American public,
even those who are well-informed. As this debate developsand, I
believe, bursts into public view, and begins to engage the Catholic
remnantmajor implications for the relationship of Catholics to America,
and America to Catholics, hang in the balance.

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